In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) system, a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) is used to transmit downlink control information (DCI) to user equipment (UE), for example, an uplink scheduling instruction, a downlink data transmission indication, and common control information. The DCI includes control information, for example, resource allocation, a transmission format, power control, a frequency hopping type, and a transmission mode.
A centimeter wave (centimeter wave) frequency band is usually a frequency spectrum ranging from 3 GHz to 30 GHz, and a millimeter wave frequency band is usually a frequency spectrum ranging from 3 GHz to 300 GHz, which may be collectively referred to as a millimeter wave. With rapid development of packet services and intelligent terminals, a high-speed service with a large data amount requires more frequency spectrums. A millimeter wave has a large quantity of available frequency resources, and therefore will become a potential target frequency spectrum during future development in a 5th generation 5G mobile communications system and an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) system.
A main challenge of using a millimeter wave high frequency band in cellular communication lies in that a relatively large path loss exists in signal transmission on this frequency band. In addition, signal attenuation caused by factors such as signal absorption and scattering performed by air, rain, fog, buildings or other objects is extremely severe. Therefore, during signal transmission on a high frequency band, massive multiple-input multiple-output (Massive MIMO) antennas need to be used to form an extremely high antenna gain, to compensate for a path loss in a signal transmission process. There may be up to a hundred of antennas in a massive MIMO antenna array. This may cause a relatively large antenna gain, and also generate a relatively narrow antenna beam to ensure cell coverage. Currently, in the LTE system, a physical control format indicator channel (PCFICH) and the PDCCH are sent on entire system full bandwidth, and if the PCFICH and the PDCCH are sent on the system full bandwidth by using a massive MIMO technology by using a narrow beam, PCFICH data and PDCCH data transmitted by using different beams overlap each other, so that detection performed by the user equipment (UE) becomes more complex, and implementation of a base station becomes more complex. Currently, there is no technology that can resolve a problem of transmitting the PCFICH and the PDCCH in a scenario of multiple beams.